


The Gift is Mine Tonight

by SegaBarrett



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gifts as a sign of love, M/M, Wing Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23343823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Dean's not used to receiving gifts. Castiel is eager to change that.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	The Gift is Mine Tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KennyTheKlutz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennyTheKlutz/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title is from "The Gift" by Tony Banks.

Dean tried to look back and remember the first time he had heard the word, _angel_. Maybe it had been about Mary. In those early years, there were those platitudes, from people who weren’t hunters of course. The ones who would put a hand on Dean’s shoulder and tell him “she’s an angel now”.

Dean wasn’t sure what they meant by that exactly, or how that was supposed to help at all, but he knew one thing for sure and that was that what he was doing right now had not been what they had had in mind.

His fingers traced the contours of Castiel’s spine, marking out where the wings jutted out from the bone. 

The way that Castiel smelled, the way he always smelled was always a surprise to Dean. It was like he couldn’t breathe when he was near, as if he was being pulled into somewhere. Considering the circumstances, maybe he was. Maybe there was something in the angel’s grace that linked him to Dean.

Maybe that was the real reason that it seemed like Dean could never die, not forever. Only hurt and hurt and hurt again and again.

He wouldn’t think of that right now, though. Castiel was next to him and nothing, not any of their silly little fights about things Dean couldn’t even remember later, could keep them apart for good.

Not when Castiel seemed to have so many things left that he wanted to do for Dean. So many things left that he wanted to show him. To give him.

***

Dean had never really been given gifts when he was growing up. John was too busy for frivolous things like that, for any of the trimmings of a normal family life. As soon as he would burst in, he’d announce where they were off to left, and sometimes he didn’t return for months at a time.

That was normal. And it made sense that he never came back bearing gifts.

Sometimes Dean had hoped for it, though. He’d watched the families on all of the shows, the old stuff like the Waltons or the Wonder Years, and whenever the fathers came back from business trips, they would always come back with a bag of goodies for the kids. A BB gun, maybe, or shiny silver pennies from the West. And they would run to him and wrap their arms around him, and it would be a perfect picture.

He would picture it sometimes, the way that it would have been, the same way he could picture Mary Winchester but couldn’t quite reach out and touch her, because she was never quite real.

***

The first time that Castiel gave Dean a gift, he woke Dean up from a deep slumber, the kind where one is caught up in the bedsheets and finds it impossible to break back out again without hitting the floor. The kind where every single dream seems so real that there is no chance at all that it could be an illusion.

Dean, upon being awoken, found that he was hovering about an inch above the ground, suspended in animation, about to hit the hardwood of the bunker and collide. He put out his hand to stop himself and let out a grunt as it collided with the wood. He winced.

“Dean,” Castiel said, because he never seemed to notice things like that. They were far too human preoccupations, and even in his fleeting moments in which he’d been among them, it had all been a flash in the pan.

Millions of angels on the heads of a pin, spinning endlessly.

“Yeah, Cas?” Dean replied, flopping to the floor and grunting as a pillow slipped over and hit him in the head at the very same time. He yelped.

“Dean?” Castiel asked again, his face curling with some concern but also with some amusement, as if he liked studying every stupid little thing Dean did so that he could make a list of them. He didn’t know what good that would do, but maybe angels had some kind of perception above and beyond, when they hadn’t decided to become crazy killing machines, that was. “I have something for you.”

“What?”

“Did you not hear me the first time I said it?” Castiel seemed to pause for a moment, then added, “I thought that it was… customary for humans to give each other gifts, in order to show their significance to one another.

Dean sat up from his spot on the floor and then pulled himself into a standing position.

“I mean, but it’s not my birthday or anything, though.”

“Did there have to be a reason?” Dean asked, then paused and added, “What is it?”

“I believe you’re supposed to open it and then find out.” Castiel extended his hand, and there was a rectangle-shaped black box inside. Dean let his fingers run over the sides, sliding against plastic that seemed so smooth that it shouldn’t exist. He pulled it back, slowly, to find a silver pendant beneath it.

“For me?” Dean asked, pulling the chain back and lifting it in front of his eyes. Imprinted on the face was a tiny pair of angel wings. 

“For you,” Castiel repeated, “I thought that it might make you think of me.”

“I’m always thinkin’ of you, Cas,” Dean replied before he had a chance to take back the words. Then he shook his head, slowly, not wanting to say words like that. Not wanting to think things like that. 

People who Dean said things like that tended to end up in mortal danger.

It wasn’t like Cas was “people”, though.

And it wasn’t like he was mortal, either.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be in danger.

***

The next time Castiel gave Dean a gift, they were lying in bed together – well, not quite bed. A corner of the floor in which Dean had collapsed after a too-long case had led to exhaustion.

Yes, that was something he felt now, after Chuck had pulled the plug. But it had been different that day. The drumming that seemed to be around him at all times had finally overtaken him, and he hadn’t even made it to the bed. 

Sam had walked by him and shook his head; at least, that was the way that Dean had pictured it later in his head. For Sam had been upstairs when Dean awoke, finding Castiel looking down at him with an expression he couldn’t read.

So many of Castiel’s expressions were ones that Dean couldn’t read. Dean had hoped he was a stoic, but Castiel went to an entirely new level.  
He must have walked somewhere else – though Castiel didn’t always seem to walk as much as glide or appear. When he returned, he had a wet rag and he was whispering something against Dean’s ear that he didn’t quite catch. Everything seemed to quiet in the room that Dean shivered. It was too right, a phrase that didn’t make sense, but it was like being too quiet. Something had to come along to ruin it.

Instead, he listened to Castiel whisper into his ear, making each hair tingle, “I have something for you.”

Dean shivered, suddenly aware of a soft brush against his back. He turned his head to see one of Castiel’s wings trailing against it, traveling up the spine. 

“Cas, I don’t…” and for once, Dean Winchester was at a loss for words. 

“This is for you,” Castiel continued, as if Dean hadn’t spoken at all, and presented him with a pillow, a red and blue one that it looked like someone’s grandmother had sewn together. Dean wondered at where he had gotten it, and so suddenly too, but it seemed as if asking him for specifics would be likely to ruin the joy of such a bizarre moment in time.

“It is? Well… wow, Cas,” he said instead. 

“Your head looked a little… rough,” Castiel replied. Was he looking away? Could that really be what he was doing right now? It was as if Castiel was nervous, but it wasn’t as if there was anything different; he was around Dean all the time and there should be nothing for him to be worried about.

But even Dean couldn’t delude himself into ignoring that, couldn’t ignore the fact that this was what it was.

He looked down, squeezing the pillow between his fingers and feeling satin beneath them. He was warm. Castiel made him warm.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, not quite sure where to go from there. “Cas,” he began, and the angel cut him off.

“There’s no need to discuss this, Dean. You look… tired. You look like you have been run over.”

“Well, thanks.”

That was when they ended up with lips on lips; he wasn’t sure who turned to whom or who did what exactly. It was more like a foregone conclusion, a paper airplane gliding down to a ground point. Dean whispered his name into the angel’s lips, thinking to himself that maybe this was a prayer.

“What is you need me to do, Cas?” Dean asked when they had a moment’s break, a second to come up for air. “Why are you doing all of this? Why for me?”  
Castiel looked back at him and leaned in, kissing him again.

“Why not for you, Dean?” He climbed on to the bed and spread his legs, letting his wings splay out beside him. “Why not everything for you, Dean?”

Dean rose to his feet and looked down at him before crouching, letting his fingers brush against the soft light of the wing, each tiny spiky tuft of each feather. He stroked it, letting each feather stand up as his finger slipped off, letting out a little gasp at the way it seemed to want to stay, the way that it clung.

“Cas, I can’t,” he said, even as he ran his hands down the wing again. He couldn’t, maybe, but he would, as much as he willed himself to not let himself get attached. He couldn’t lose someone else – and he wouldn’t let Cas lose him, either.

He would stay attached to his wing, however he had to make that happen.

He would have to try and be Castiel’s own gift.

***

The last time – before now, because of course, there was always now – Castiel brought Dean Winchester a gift, it was a gift that would continue on, because it was one of those gifts that wasn’t so much in what it was but in what it meant.

Dean had been injured, bleeding, a slash against his chest and he was aching. This had been Chuck, always Chuck, playing on his strings as if Dean was nothing but his marionette to be toyed with for amusement – maybe he had been (and the despair at that, drumming in Dean’s head, almost making it too difficult to breathe sometimes)…  
Castiel could have healed it quickly; Dean knew that he could. It was barely a blink and a tiny burst of energy for him, like plugging in a cell phone to an outlet and watching it bump up a single percent.

But instead he grazed his fingers over the wound, almost tantalizingly gently, until Dean wanted to cry (something he would not do, he could not do, if he fell apart then what was there left for any of them?).

“Cas, what are you doing?” he asked, and he didn’t want to know exactly. Maybe as soon as Castiel spoke, it would break the moment and then they would both go back to acting as if there had never been a moment in the first place. 

“I’m getting to know you,” Castiel whispered, and then his lips traveled to Dean’s ear. The voice of an angel, he thought, with a shiver, and a giddy laugh almost followed. “I want to get to know you.”

“Come on, Cas,” Dean mumbled. “I can’t…” He wasn’t exactly sure what he could or couldn’t do, but it seemed like the thing to say. 

“What can’t you do?” Castiel inquired in response, because he wasn’t someone who read a bunch of corny romance novels (neither did Dean, of course, he would deny having watched that Lifetime movie marathon to his dying day) and knew that usually the response, dubious as it might be, was something like “you can”.

“I can’t repay you,” Dean blurted, instead, and he was ashamed of it as soon as it made its way out of his mouth but, well, there it was out in the open now. 

“When was it ever about repaying anyone?” Castiel asked in reply. “That’s never been what any of this has been about…”

“Then what has it been about? Everything’s got a price, doesn’t it? Especially a gift.”

“It’s my understanding that the fact that it doesn’t have a price is precisely what makes it a gift in the first place.”

Dean’s hand leisurely made its way down Castiel’s wing as he spoke, almost not believing the words because when had anything ever come free to him?

And it was as if the angel heard him, read his mind. Maybe it had been transmitted in the form of a silent prayer. 

“I am free… Well, I’m not,” Castiel told him, “I am attached to you. And you will not be able to get rid of me… Unless you want to, of course. I might… follow you around for a while trying to convince you to change your mind, but…”

Dean leaned in and kissed him, letting out a little chuckle as a wing brushed across his nose.

“I won’t make you have to do all that, Cas. I promise. I think I like you staying right here with me.”

“Can I keep giving you things, or is that an imposition?”

Dean chuckled. 

“I think we can get around it. Now… get over here and lie down. I’m going to order us some takeout.” He paused and ran a finger over his wing again, humming at it quietly and considering that, in this crazy messed up world (only getting crazier and more messed up all of the time), he would always have Cas. And that was good, because he would always need Cas. “And it’s my treat.”

Castiel smiled.

“I believe that would make it the gift of whoever actually owns that credit card, Dean,” he replied, pressing a kiss to Dean’s lips.

“Well, it’s been like 20 years, so if someone is getting these bills and hasn’t cancelled it yet, he must be as generous as you.”

“Or maybe he is enjoying reading about all of your travels and adventures.”

Dean hummed again and shifted in his spot.

“Then we had better keep them coming, shouldn’t we?” He reached over and picked up the phone, stroking his finger along Castiel’s wing absent-mindedly as he did, feeling at home. “Yeah, I’d like to order, uh… two large house fried rices and that thing that comes with the pancakes too…” Castiel pressed his lips to Dean’s neck, and he nearly chuckled into the phone.

Thankfully, the years had given him a lot of composure.

He had a feeling he would be needing it tonight.


End file.
